After you shut down a dangerous cave system to allow a hibernating bat population to thrive, there’s only one thing left to do… scan it with lasers.
That’s exactly what 3D Technologies R&D has done to the entire Piusa Cavern in south-eastern Estonia. As a matter of fact, they scanned it, modeled it in modo, then put it into one of their 3D touchscreen kiosk so others could experience caving from the safety of a visitor center.
The caves are presented as interactive real-time 3D model where visitors can hover around using 32“ touchscreen. Cave walls, sandstone colours and minor details such as inscriptions on the sand wall made by the past visitors are observable in the computer model. Visitors can read additional information about the caverns and can take virtual tour inside the caves.
The scanner used is a Leica HDS 3000. After the point cloud scan was create and cleaned up, the data was brought into modo to model and apply texture mapping.
How does it look? Here’s a quick glimpse of what you’ll see via the 3D touchscreen kiosk.
